GREGORY'S DREAM
301
place or platform among the high houses and meeting people there
to enlighten him. Had he not found the butcher at C. in his dream?
And might he not find his dream Negro in New York? My further
thoughts were entirely muddled; at least this is
all
I remember of them.
As
I said, the whole thing happened only today. Gregory, in spite of
all his experience and training, has certainly kept his spontaneity;
his friendship is ever surprising to me. I have never more truly loved
him than today, and he will see me soon, just as he wrote.
I have to add one more thought, perhaps more important than
any others. By now it is late in the night, and I have been thinking
about Gregory's dream ever since I came home. I now believe his
dream must be urtderstood not so much with reference to him and
me and pur individual guilt, as with reference to our time. Undoubt–
edly this is what Gregory came to recognize long before I did, prob–
ably right after he told me the dream, if it did not become clear to
him during his very. telling of it. I simply mean that the dream once
more reminded him, and me, of the impossibility of living on in spite
of, no, in compliance with, the unspeakable misery and meanness of
the world. Did the dream reveal that we are smug enough to live on
anyway? Did it even tell us that we are not free of the feelings that
make for these crimes, for the Curse? I see I was rather slow and
clumsy in taking so much time to realize that it did, but now I do
realize it and don't know what to do. Gregory isn't here; as if he could
help me! Did he go to New York to find a Messiah? A nigger, a kike?
Perhaps he went in the same way in which Shmuel Ziegelboim com–
mitted &uicide, leaving behind a letter of protest against certain speci–
fied earthly powers. Gregory has not yet given up, he
is
still searching.
The thought that he might have killed himself is terrible, but sud–
denly no longer far-fetched. God help him to find his Messiah, and
if
his skin be green with red dots and splashes! God help me close
with this hope and wake up tomorrow with more of it, not less!
